Fiction
Released March, 2014
338 Pages
Bottom Line: Skip it.

Plot Summary of The Moon Sisters:

Sisters Jazz (the diligent, responsible one) and Olivia (the dreamy, spontaneous one) try to recover from their mother’s death in vastly different ways.

My Thoughts on The Moon Sisters:

I picked up The Moon Sisters after seeing some positive reviews on other blogs. But, it was fairly middle of the road for me. It wasn’t painful to read, but it didn’t really speak to me either. I re-read a couple of the blog reviews after finishing the book and noticed that a few mentioned it being a great choice for those that appreciate the bond of sisters. Maybe I should have paid more attention to this initially because I grew up with two brothers! Could a lack of understanding of the sisterly bond be why this book didn’t speak to me?

Beth Moon, Jazz and Olivia’s mother, was a writer who had been working on one novel her entire life and couldn’t bring herself to finish it. She was pretty much housebound, had a sleeping disorder, and may well have suffered from manic depression (or bipolar disorder). She was disowned by her successful father when she got pregnant with Jazz and eloped with Banik, Jazz’s father.

Part of the novel focuses on Beth’s unresolved issues with her father and I did enjoy that part of the story. I feel like this segment had some teeth and I possibly would have liked the book better had it been a more central focus.

Much of the book focuses on Olivia’s method of dealing with her mother’s death, which was to go to the real life setting of Beth’s fictional novel (a remote bog in the West Virginia mountains) to try to see a “ghost fairy” (some sort of light that twinkles in the bog at night). This involves living in the woods, train hopping, sketchy characters, and Jazz being forced to tag along to keep Olivia out of trouble. And, this is where The Moon Sisters lost me.

I saw Olivia much as Jazz sees her…as an irresponsible, immature girl that lacks any semblance of judgement. Olivia struck me as having the traits of a thirteen year old…not the eighteen year old that she is. She annoyed me so much that I couldn’t enjoy the parts of the book that focused on her antics. And, I never really understood her dire mission to visit the setting of her mother’s book. What was the point? Why was she willing to put herself and Jazz in such danger to do this?

Finally, I felt like I could appreciate the sisterly bond a bit more by the end of the book and I liked the final scene where some of this is philosophically discussed. However, there were a couple large questions that the author left unanswered and that bothered me.

Maybe readers with sisters will enjoy The Moon Sisters more than I did…

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